Valley Forge Casino to host car show, fund-raiser

Those souped-up, chromed-out wheels rolling into the Valley Forge Casino Resort parking lot on Sunday won’t be there just to make the usual sea of SUVs and compacts seem a little humdrum.

The classics, muscle cars, antiques, street rods and trucks — guaranteed to make any gearhead drool — are all part of EveryCarShow.com’s ambitious indoor-outdoor celebration of chrome, polish, big engines and classic curves.

The show is also a fund-raiser for Katie Rohrbacher of Royersford, who suffered a traumatic brain injury from a car accident eight years ago.

“You won’t be able to miss us ... it will be a spectacle to see from the road,” said supercharged car buff Randy Hofer, the creator of EveryCarShow.com.

The show will be held rain or shine at the Valley Forge Casino Resort, 1160 First Ave., King of Prussia from at 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Registration will be held from 8 to 11 a.m.

“The way the parking lot is laid out, you’ll see all the activity and cars coming down Gulph Road,” Hofer said. “Thousands of people going past there and heading to the mall will see us.”

With more than 400 vehicles expected, it’s the first car show to get the green light from the casino since it debuted last spring.

“It’s the last car show of the season so we positioned it just right,” said Hofer, who runs EveryCarShow.com with his wife, Nancy, from their Collegeville home and is president of Keystone State Corvette Club. “We’re the last hurrah for the year.”

The event features casino play specials, a 2013 Corvette raffle, silent auction, vendors and more than 75 trophies awarded in 12 classes, as well as the fund-raiser, “Caring for Katie.”

“The casino had already partnered with one of our club’s partners, Canine Partners for Life, so they welcomed the idea that Katie might benefit from this show to actually get a service dog someday if she wants one,” Hofer said. “It costs $27,000 to train a dog fully for service. If we do this for five years and raise $5,000 a year, she has her dog if she chooses to.”

With its maxim as a “one-stop online car show” for every aspect of best car practices, EveryCarShow.com is a national roundup of “cool cars and cool events for all ages,” according to Hofer, who launched the dynamically interactive “Mercedes of all car show websites” last spring.

“In attending car shows and car clubs, I knew there was no one source to get all the information about every car show going on,” he said. “I knew there had to be a better way, so I decided we could condense all the events in one area and one very interactive website and do it the right way.”

Working closely with car show organizers will ultimately help eliminate car shows, cruises, rallies and races battling each other for audiences on any given date, Hofer pointed out.

“It’s a matter of pre-planning, so that everybody can have their date and not share it with three other shows in the area and then dilute the attendance,” said Nancy Hofer, a realtor, who handles the business side of the venture. “His passion is with the cars, and I completely support it, and I approach it from a business standpoint in that I’m making everything work.”

The vast majority of car shows are motivated by a charitable cause, Randy Hofer said.

“We’ve put 5,000 national events through our system since May, with 32,000 hits. It all comes back to that, in raising awareness, the benefactors of the charities are going to raise more money for their cause.”

Hofer’s big plans for his site include offering year-round sustenance for motorheads, and, of course, making a few bucks from his innovative concept in the long run.

“Around here, we have a nine-month car show season, so in the winter we’ll have interactive ways people can have fun and talk about their projects,” he said. “I have experts waiting to tell them where they can get their parts and things like that.”

At the moment, all automotive outfits, including vendors like Conte’s Corvettes and Marquis Auto Restoration, and car magazines such as Road & Track and Motor Trend, are linked into EveryCarShow.com on the house.

“Once they connect with us and see how good this is, all they have to do is go to a couple of other car show sites and be amazed at what we’ve done with ours and they’ll be on board,” Hofer said.

The soul of Hofer’s vehicular passion emanates from the fiberglass Nassau Blue Corvette located in his home’s basement, where a veritable shrine to the car is jam-packed with gleaming accolades.

“I get so much enjoyment from the shows by talking to all the people who are interested in it,” he said.